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A Perfect Marriage

After years carving a nostalgia-fuelled niche for creating “forever bikes”, friends Kev Taggart and Tim Rogers are making a bit of a swerve.

The duo behind Spirit of the Seventies have locked the doors on their workshop for the last time to embark on a new chapter just around the corner.

They are joining forces with T3 Racing, who signalled their intent with the recent Ace Café 904 S, a limited edition of 15 modified Thruxtons.

“It’s a change that has happened organically after five years. Often we were taking a big hit on jobs where our desire to do them made us vulnerable to the time they were taking,” said Tim.

The new partnership fuses the engineering excellence of Tony Scott – who pulled out of the 675 Triple Challenge to focus on a Moto2 project in collaboration with Metisse – with the design knowledge of Taggart.

The link-up will allow the Spirit team, who have only ever carried out builds on a part-time basis, to work on the new project, and enable T3 to keep a foothold in the classics world.

The Gemini Project will see a limited edition of 100 of the unique Speed Triple, half of them in a Streetfighter-style and the rest packing a more retro feel.

One each of the bikes, which can be modified to suit each customer, will be offered to 50 Triumph dealers around the world.

The Kent, UK link-up, which started in earnest in May, will not mean the end of Spirit-only bikes, but will give Kev and Tim the chance to be more selective about what they do.

Although they will continue to work with partners such as Barbour or, more recently, NIXON and are discussing carrying on modern Triumph builds too, Tim said: “It’s the complex one-off builds with modern bikes that we’re not familiar with and labour-intensive, older bike builds that will take a back seat.”

Tim said: “The bikes will be available by the end of the year and, although this is uncharted territory, we’re confident it will be a great marriage with the potential to bring out some truly stunning bikes.”

You have to keep looking ahead and we believe this is the right thing to do to keep fresh. In fact, we already have our sights on another project so watch this space.